Club Updates and Vacation

I forgot to write last time that I’m officially on school vacation! Last Thursday was the last day of school for the term and exams ended the day before. Thankfully both my exams- ICT and Math- were the week before so I had plenty of the mark my papers and get them back to the students. It wasn’t fun but it was easy- and besides it’s my job. Between 3 ICT classes and 1 Math class, I had approximately 250 papers to grade. But especially because I teach ICT there are always funny things about my students’ answers so that helps break up the monotony. Let me back up and say that I had the nurse do condom demonstrations in each class for World AIDS Day. So when one of my form 2 girls was labeling parts of a computer she got confused for a pen drive and wrote ‘penis.’ Now I have to do some teaching again there and make sure all is clear… also in my form 1 class I had a safety and health question about what can happen to you by using the computer. It was an ‘all except’ type question with choices like wrist pain, headache, HIV and back pain. Some students got the question wrong which doesn’t worry me that much since I’m hoping it’s more a misunderstanding of the English language rather than a misconception about health. I’ll make sure I review that next term just in case- you never know.

I’m enjoying my free time on break but have still been somewhat productive cleaning my house, working on writing a small grant, visiting and photographing people, and holding a couple of club meetings. One of my student’s (Ruth our library prefect and one of our brightest girls in form 3) families asked me to come to their house a while ago to take photos of them. Yesterday she came to get me yesterday to take me there and I finally went. Of course once there I had to wait a while for them to gather and prepare by changing into nice clothes, borrowing my earrings (yes her sister did that), etc. There were kids everywhere and it ended up being a lot of fun photographing everyone. The last person I photographer was her great-grandmother who’s in her 90s. After snapping her sitting in a chair, she decided to get up and dance so I could take her photo again. It was pretty great and I got a video of her singing and dancing too.

It’s been a long time since I wrote about the clubs I’m working on here so thought I’d update on things. I think already I wrote about doing a Girls Club on HIV/AIDS and condom use last month. On Friday, the day after school vacated, we met and I taught the girls how to make coin purses out of water sachets. Hurrah for crafts were you reuse rubbish! It was perfect because the girls came in staggered at different times so it made it easier to help then. Once some of the girls finished their own, they helped the other girls. I had hip life music playing while they were working and everyone had fun hanging out and chatting. Of course I took tons of photos especially of their finished products. I gave each girl an extra zip to take home and make another too. Every time I announce Girls Club, the boys always either ask me if they can attend or if I’ll start a Boys Club for them. For a while I told them no they needed to ask one of the masters since maybe it’d be strange for me a woman to lead a boys club. But more recently I changed my mind after realizing I shouldn’t deny the boys the opportunity to meet in a club setting first off and second maybe the things I’ll talk about with them nobody else will. For our first meeting we basically did the same HIV/AIDS and condom use lesson I did with the Girls Club last month. It’s great because the peer educators can help with some of the games and the condom demonstration so it’s more student-led than me-led. Last month, after returning from camp and having the students who attended the camp debrief their classmates, Chris and I formed an Agriculture club. Our first meeting was well attended (40-50 students) but very short since it was after extra classes one day and the students were really hungry but we talked about why we were starting the club, discussed food security so that they understood it’s an issue here that they have the power to do something about, and then talked small about school gardens. The students are really interested in school gardens and beekeeping so we’re hoping to focus on those topics first. On Wednesday this week we held another club meeting about nutrition and moringa. I was worried the students had forgotten about the meeting since it was during break. One girl knocked on my door promptly at 10AM so we went to the school to wait on the others. And we waited. And we waited. Around 11AM more students came so I played a Planet Earth episode on my laptop while we waited some more. Finally around 10:30AM we started about 20 students strong with a short review on nutrition- they learn about it in school so have all the knowledge but don’t necessarily apply it. Moringa trees are scattered around our village but most people don’t know about the nutritional benefit so that was our next topic. Then we had story time- I read them a kid’s book on Wangari Maathi, the Noble Peace Prize winner who started the Green Belt movement in Kenya. Then last, as promised, I gave them each some moringa seeds to take home and nurse.

My friend Joseph and I finally had the chance to meet with some of the women in our community to discuss the kayeiyo issue that we attended training on way back in June. He talked about it briefly at our PTA meeting in October but was able to go more in-depth in our meeting with the mothers. I had the projector for our first mother’s meeting last month which was great because we could show pictures of some of the living conditions girls/women find themselves in when they travel to the big cities in the south to do menial jobs. Of course the meetings are all in Buli so much of the time I zone out or make faces at babies to try to make them smile. Last week we held our second meeting and Joseph, brave man, talked about family planning. I think it’s always good to talk about but inevitably the women say that the men make the decisions around that so really we need to discuss it with them. I finally got to meet native of our village named Lariba who now lives Germany and returns periodically. She’s formed an NGO there called Maara to help the village and part of what she wants to do is form a women’s group. We discussed joining our efforts together since it’s the same women and we want to work on the same issues. In fact, in a meeting she had with them over the weekend she discussed the healing properties of moringa which is perfect because next month we’ll talk about nutrition and moringa with the mothers like we did with the students, also giving them seeds to plan.

Getting into the Christmas spirit here is rather difficult but I have been listening to Christmas music, watching movies, daily tearing links off my handmade Christmas countdown paper chain, and eating watermelon. Yes I now associate eating watermelon with Christmas because it’s one of two seasons of having watermelon here. This year I’ll be home from Christmas only in my dreams (I’ll be spending it with other volunteers at our office in Tamale again) but next year I’ll really be home! Hope everyone has a very happy Christmas. I’ll be taking a 3 week break from updating the blog so see you next year! Lots to look forward to in 2013…

Monastery, Gardens and Holiday Fun

Before heading to Accra for Thanksgiving, I attended the School Gardens IST with my counterpart for our agriculture club Chris. Our students are really interested in doing a garden and after camp I felt pretty comfortable in doing one but decided to attend the training so Chris and I could learn more and he would feel more invested in the project. It was held at the Kristoboase Monastery in Techiman which was amazing. I’d wanted to visit the monastery for a while after hearing from other volunteers who’d been there about how beautiful, peaceful, and relaxing it is. O and that they serve good food. The rooms were very basic but the food was delicious and a lot of the produce was from their garden. They farm on their property as part of their work since it’s an operating monastery. The grounds are beautiful since they have many different tree groves and cool rock formations. It was fun exploring the surrounding area.

The first day was the classroom session which had a ton of good information but by the end of the day I grew restless. We learned about composting, fertilizers, pesticides, and how to plan and plant the school garden. The next day we travelled to the site of a nearby volunteer where her students were actually starting a school garden and we got to help with creating the beds and finishing the fence. Her students also made us some fabulous fufu which was a treat for me since I don’t eat it much in the North since TZ is our main food. At the end of the training Chris and I came up with an action plan for what we want to do back at school. This month we’re selecting the site (near the borehole), talking to the students about what they want to grow, and writing a small grant to get money for the materials. Hopefully by February we can actually buy the materials and plan the garden in time for the hot season. We plan to start small so we can have a well maintained garden. One thing we talked about during training is that the garden is a laboratory and I really like that idea. First and foremost it’s for the students to learn.

After we finished up with the training, the group of volunteers all travelled to Accra for Thanksgiving. I couldn’t stay with my usual homestay since she went to Spain on a rock climbing trip for the holiday so I stayed with my friends Elyse and Lauren’s homestay family which was a lot of fun for us to be able to hang out. Thanksgiving at the Ambassador’s residence was amazing of course and we had the whole spread of traditional American food just like last year. Plus it was fun to see friends (like the awesome girls in the photo) I hadn’t seen in a while and catch up on everything. Friday I did some shopping in Accra- Auntie Esther who sells awesome batik and other clothe even had a Black Friday sale for us! The travel back up was long as usual and it made me realize 1. how nice the trip down was since it was broken up into smaller legs and 2. how much I really don’t want to have to make that trip again for a while. Unless something unexpected comes up I probably won’t be back in Accra until April. I’ve now been in Ghana over 18 months and have about 8 months to go!

My wonderful fiancé Ed is flying from Accra to Tamale two days after Christmas so he can see Northern Ghana in style. First we’ll head straight to my village so he can see the place, meet people, and adjust to the time zone change. We’ll spend New Years Eve and Day here and then head out the next day to see the Upper East. After going to Paga so see the crocs, we’ll go hang out at the Oasis- the place I’m always raving whenever we go for our volunteer meetings since it’s so beautiful and relaxing. Then our last stop is Mole National Park for the cheapest safari in Africa since you walk with an armed guard. Hopefully we’ll see elephants, baboons, antelope and wart hogs. That’s our grand plan right now- I can’t wait to see him, show him my village and the North!

Somehow Computer Lab

I decided to write about our computer “lab” (somehow) since I’ve been spending a lot of time there recently. In April when the now re-elected member of parliament (MP) for our district donated 5 desktop computers to our school we talked about and then started writing a grant to renovate an existing classroom to convert it into a computer lab but it proved expensive and we struggled to come up with more community contributions. Before the term ended, the headmistress of the primary school offered for us to use a room (with electricity and a ceiling fan) that was just storing desks to setup the computers. I personally preferred the more local solution especially since computer labs are difficult to make sustainable. This is a good way to see how the lab gets used, who takes ownership over it, and if there really is a need to have a fancier lab. We accepted but it took a while to get desks made, buy voltages regulators, chairs, etc. Finally it was setup in the end of October mainly because the carpenter took forever to make the desks. Last month it was used a few times but not as much as I was hoping since I travelled a lot and the lights went out some too. This month the students have been eager to go there and I’ve been spending a lot of time with them after school and on the weekends. Right now the focus is on them learning mouse and keyboard skills but they’re also looking at word processing, spreadsheets, and other topics we cover in class. So far it’s mostly been students who live closer to the school who’ve been coming but next term I want to start bringing students there in groups. We have more work to do in order to install additional software and get another socket installed so the lab will be up to 5 computers instead of just 3.

When they get tired of typing and the like, I sometimes put on films for them such as BBC’s Planet Earth and Life. It’s so funny to watch their reactions to new wonders of the natural world, especially to some of the fish and sea episodes. They’re amazed by the behind the scenes portions where it shows scuba diving. During one episode on reptiles and amphibians some of the boys got scared of the chameleons. Turns out they’re more afraid of chameleons than snacks whereas I’m fascinated by chameleons and love their eyes. So much so that just before Thanksgiving one was working around our school and I touched it. My students were watching and thought I was pretty crazy. I went home to get my camera but by the time I came back they put it back in the tree so I had to settle for long shot. Now I understand why when I showed Tangled to some students last year they were all jumpy when the sidekick chameleon came on the screen. In other news, I had an interesting insect encounter over the weekend. I went to go get a fork to eat the crepes I made for breakfast and lo and behold a praying mantis crawled out of the cup where I keep my utensils. Occasionally a mantis finds its way into my house; they especially love my white curtains in my living room. This time I decided to send the guy outside. When I dropped him into my gated area near my latrine he went into attack mode. I swear I saw flash of red mouth or something. Then I grabbed my camera and provoked it some more so I could capture it in “fight” mode. These are the things I do at my house when there’s nothing else to do. I sometimes wish there were more exotic animal encounters, especially when people back home ask me about animals in Ghana, to be had in my village but it is nice to be able to walk and bike without fear of coming across something.  I think had more to be afraid of when I lived in Florida and would go biking!

Laziness| Goals

I fully intended to catch up on blogging this week with posts about the school gardens training I attended, Thanksgiving, our somehow computer lab, and other items but honestly I am lazy these days. I’m not sure what has happened to me after coming back to the village after Thanksgiving but I lack motivation. I’m ok as far as school goes with wrapping up the term during exam time but for everything else as I said before I’m lazy. I don’t know if it’s because the time after Thanksgiving at home is so full of preparations that I’m missing that there. Or because of the mini-hot season that’s happened before harmattan (the winds from the Sahara that bring dust and colder temps) along with it the disgusting burning of the bush. Or after eighteen months here I’m given to bouts of apathy. So even though I should push myself harder I’m going to let it slide this time and vow to write more soon. I do want to share part of a poem that is in the P6 English book that keeps coming to mind (I read it to my friend Titus for him to turn to Braille) and then a small writing our boys senior prefect Michael wrote for his goals exercise.

Laziness, laziness, laziness
Laziness is a bad disease
It is horrible, terrible 
Laziness is a destroyer of persons
 Let laziness creep into your life
And you’ll be hungry
And you’ll want
And you’ll be unhappy

We’ve almost finished with the solar light project with just a few students remaining to pay and pick theirs up. I’ve already had many requests for additional lights so need to figure out how to make that happen. Enjoy Michael’s photo with his light and reading about his goals:

My Short and Long Term Goals- Akangye Michael

I am very glad to write to you about my goals in life. To commence, I would like to bring to your notice my short term goal. It is to pass my basic education certificate examination at a good grade so that I get a good placement. If God permits, I should get a senior high school and continue my studies.

Again I want to tell you about my long term goal which is the most important thing that can beautify my future. This goal is that after I finish my university education, I want to become a medical doctor as my occupation in the future. Some few years later, I would like to get married to an American couple and live as a couple. I strongly believe that the Almighty God will also help me so that all these dreams should come true.

Solar Powered Students

This week my students have started to pay for and pick up their solar lights.  After weeks of asking me when they would get them and being told "It's coming," a typical Ghanaian response, they are very excited to begin using their lights to study at night.  Today I taught them a lesson on goal making and gave them a writing assignment telling me one short term and long term goal.  After all, it's important to have goals in mind for the future and an action plan to achieve them (note to self: practice what you preach).  A big thanks from my students and me to the donors who made this project possible! 

Peer Education Finale (Part 2: The Bad)

Too often as an optimist I tend focus on the positives and want to quickly forget the negatives.  But it’s important to learn and grow from challenges we face which is why I want to share some of the difficulties I encountered with the peer education finale.  First off the day before the program my counterpart Joe (see the photo of the two of us in our awesome polos) found out he had to go to Fumbisi for an interview to help with voting in the upcoming election.  He didn’t really have a choice so I had to make do without him.  We decided I’d cover one of the sessions he was planning to do in the morning and then have him do another session in the afternoon since he’d be back by then.  He did return in time to take lunch with us as well as help with the afternoon so it was all good.

The main problem I had was around a guest speaker I had invited to talk to my students.  I met the guy by contacting him using information from a list of support groups for PLWHA that Peace Corps gave me.  In July I went to their support group meeting in the next village over and discussed with him about coming to talk to my students.  He was receptive to the idea and we’ve kept in touch since them.  I scheduled him to come a while ago once we selected the date and we talked up until a couple of days before the program when he was working to repair his moto so he could come.  The night before and morning of the program I couldn’t get in touch with him but finally he called me around noon.  He told me he was out our station and I should come get him which I couldn’t do since I was with my students.   I asked him to come to our primary school but he kept calling and repeating himself.  Long story short I was walking with two of my girls to go check on our food (which was running late) when I called him again since he hadn’t shown up and one of my girls spotted him.  I sent her to him and when she returned she told me “Madam, he is boozed.  He is so drunk he almost fell over.”  I sent the girls to check on the food while I went to talk to him.  Indeed he was completely drunk and somewhat belligerent since it took me so long to come.  Unfortunately nobody (like the headmaster, my counterpart Joseph, or go to guy Chris) was around to help me handle the situation.  The man was ready to go to speak to my students.  I ended up telling him the program wasn’t coming on today and apologizing profusely but still offered to pay him for his fuel to come and go.  Understandably I was super stressed by this point.  But I ran to my house to pick the money and bring it to him.  Later I found out he went to someone’s house to sleep the alcohol off and didn’t leave our village until the next day- I was glad he didn’t try to drive home.  I’m just thankful he wasn’t able to find his way to the primary school and show up in that state to ‘talk’ to my students.  That scene could’ve possibly been even more unpleasant.  This is the second time since I’ve been here that a resource person has shown up to talk to my students drunk.  It’s really sad how rampant alcoholism is here.  I’ve learned from this that I need to be very careful who I invite to talk to my students.  Also I would caution other volunteers to make sure you know the person very well.  My mistake was thinking a single meeting allowed me to truly assess someone. 

The last challenge was just around organizing the food vendor and the lateness of the food.  First when we planned the menu I thought that’s all I’d have to do.  But instead I had to meet with Madam Agie to write down all the ingredients and the amount she’d need to buy so I could give her the exact amount to go buy at market.  Then that morning I had to go to our little market to pick out the fowls to buy amidst trying to setup everything at the primary school.  Of course our food was late coming- we scheduled lunch for noon but the food wasn’t ready until 1:30pm.  Thankfully after so long in Ghana I know how things work and am much more flexible.  I had some role play games and films to keep the students busy and not thinking about their hunger.  In the end, the food was pretty amazing so it worked out.  And all in all the program was successful- the students learned a lot and also had fun! 

Peer Education Finale (Part 1: The Good)

It’s been a long time coming but we finally held our Peer Educators finale (as I called it) on Saturday.  First a little background information.  Starting in the second term, the assistant health teacher Joseph and I started a peer educators training program focusing on educating and sensitizing the students on HIV/AIDS.  Since the beginning, we've met with the 12 selected form 1 and form 2 students on topics including basic facts on STIs and HIV/AIDS, decision making, saying no, and assertiveness.  For a while we’d been planning to hold a one-day program finale in order to complete the program successfully and swear in the peer educators.  It took a while for the small grant I wrote to come through and the PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Relief for AIDS Relief) funds to be available.  The goal of the program was to equip our students to be effective as peer educators to educate, demonstrate, and sensitize their peers on HIV/AIDS and other issues.  We hoped at the end of our program the students would walk away with additional knowledge and skills regarding HIV/AIDS education and the confidence to share their knowledge with their peers through discussions, games, role plays, and condom demonstrations.

Now I’ll start with the actual program and right now I’ll focus on what went well and save the difficulties for another day.  The day before the program I gathered the 12 students (6 boys and 6 girls) together to discuss when they should be where wearing what and all that.  At the time, my student Michael (who wrote me the best teacher letter and went to camp with me) wasn’t sure if he’d be able to come since his parents wanted him to go to market the next day. So I was very thankful on Saturday when all 12 students showed up.  We started out by briefly reviewing what a peer educator is and what will be expected of them when the program is finished).  Then we played a team true/false game to revise basic facts on HIV/AIDS with toffee (candy) won by all- 2 pieces to the winners, 1 piece to the losers.  One thing that was important to me while planning the program was to make it as fun and interactive as possible- I didn’t want it to be another school day for them.  Also I wanted to reward their hard work during all of our trainings last school year.  Next we took a snack break and enjoyed biscuits (crackers) and cold water during which I showed them films about condom use to preface the nurse’s demonstration.  My friend Joel (or Nurse Joel as he’s stored in my phone) came to do the condom demonstration and did a great job.  I was happy to have someone from the clinic come and take part of the program.  After the demonstration, I took the students outside to play the condom time bomb game like we did at camp.  They enjoyed laughing at each other try to burst the ‘balloon,’ answering questions to review what was just learned, and dancing to Ghanaian music on my iPod I blasted from the tiny yet effective speakers I have here.  While waiting for lunch, I had some pick and act scenarios on assertiveness, saying no, and negotiation for the more dramatic students to act out for us.  I’d tried this before in groups of two but they’d mostly get up front and giggle so this time it went much better and I think some felt more comfortable doing it individually.  Our lunch of jollof rice (spicy tomato based rice) with fowl meat was delicious and plentiful.  The students loved going back for seconds!

In the afternoon, we did the Loss Exercise from the handy dandy Peace Corps Life Skills manual.  Joseph took the students through the handout where they wrote down answers to questions about their favorite item, body part, activity, and person in addition to a secret nobody or only one person knows about them.  During this part they were rather silly sharing that they put down their brain or their penis (due to the condom demo) or whatnot.  Then we got to the more serious part where we walked them through imagining that they lost each thing they listed.  Next we talked about how they would feel if this were actually true.  It was a little difficult getting them to pretend but most of them got it in the end and listed emotions including feeling sad, bad, like they wanted to kill themselves, alone, abandoned, angry, etc.  Then we discussed how this could relate to someone testing positive for HIV and how they would feel if they or someone they knew were in this situation.  It was pretty powerful to see them process the exercise and put themselves in someone else’s shoes, practicing empathy and compassion.  Last I had them tell me how they would treat someone who was experiencing this.  It was really encouraging to hear responses like I want to help them, support them, and make them happy (when I asked for specifics, the boy said he’d have a party) instead of previous mentality of we should lock them up, kill them, etc.  We also talked about the importance of support groups for PLWHA.  Afterward we took a short break to prepare for the closing ceremony. 

During the closing ceremony, we called the students up one by one to receive a certificate of completion and lollipops from me and a Peer Educator shirt from Joseph.  I had red polo shirts made in Bolga with the HIV ribbon and the name of our school on the front and the names of all the peer educators listed on the back and the quotation “A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.”  We celebrated by drinking minerals (Coke, Sprite, Fanta), snapping a plethora of photos, and having a short dance party.  I also convinced the students to lay down on the classroom floor to attempt to make the red ribbon with our bodies.  I got the idea from somewhere and wanted to try it.  See the photo below and tell me if you can make out the ribbon.  All in all the day went really well!  Before the program, I wanted the condom demonstration/game and loss exercise to go smoothly and be impactful.  I think they were highly successfully in educating the students on prevention and sensitizing them on stigma reduction.  I’ll post again soon on challenges of putting on the training event. 

During the Loss Exercise, my student Michael that I mentioned before asked if he could put down our peer education training as his favorite activity.  Then once we went through the step by step of losing everything they wrote down he exclaimed ‘O madam- I lost you.’ Early on the training while we were discussing their role as peer educators I asked them if they had ideas on how to best educate their peers or the community.  I gave them ideas like doing a quiz game or a film show but at the time they didn’t have anything.  But by the end of it one boy mentioned how he’d like to setup a meeting in their respective area (they live in different sections or parts of the village) and a girl had the idea for them to put on a drama.  Yesterday during one of the breaks in our school day, I noticed all my peer educators convening under the tree in front of my house.  I asked if they needed something but they said no.  Later on I called Michael over to ask what they were up to and he told me that they’re trying to better plan the drama then come to me when they have a solid idea.  Today I used some of the girl peer educators to help with our Girls Club meeting where we played the transmission and risk game.  Then Linda did the condom demo while I talked about it and answered questions and we ended with the condom time bomb (again).  It’s really exciting to see the fruits of my labor!